This impact evaluation explores two initiatives to increase voter turnout and political participation in Mozambique, a country with low participation rates. One of the possible explanations for low turnout and limited participation is insufficient information about political and public issues. In particular, there is a dearth of newspapers, and news paper readership is extremely low in Mozambique. As such, this impact evaluation asks if distribution of a free newspaper with information about upcoming election scan increase voter turnout.

In addition, given the commonality and effectiveness of voter turnout drives in many countries, Mozambican turnout and other political participation could also be increased through more concerted mobilization efforts.

Increased access to information and communication technology offers a low cost and previously unavailable mechanism to promote such participation. As a result, this evaluation asks if SMS campaigns can increase political participation, and, if they can, what type of SMS campaign is most effective.

See more about this research project in this video.

Principal Investigators:

Macartan Humphreys

Pedro Vicente

Field Coordination:

Tiago Almeida

Funding:

USAID

The full content was originally published in Novafrica.org